Data Analytics and Employee Engagement: Getting it Right

Much has been written about the cost of having a disengaged workforce. Gallup reports that up to 87% of employees worldwide are not engaged in their work. In the U.S. alone, disengaged employees are estimated to cost between $450 billion to $550 billion in lost productivity. CareerBuilder says 69% of employers have been negatively affected by a bad hire in the past year. It’s reasonable to conclude that low employee engagement is negatively impacting your organization too.

Do you survey your employees each year to determine their engagement level? Annual employee surveys are often too late to be relevant. What companies need is real-time data analytics to know the engagement level of employees. It is time for HR to get employee data on a real-time basis, and turn it into actionable insights.

Signals Dashboard with employee reviews and internal HR data

Often employee feedback is in the form of unstructured text comments on websites like Glassdoor, in social media, surveys, interview notes, exit surveys, etc. Organizations must stay on top of what employees are saying, no matter where they are saying it. This means analyzing unstructured text data entered in comment fields, and then pivoting the data on structured data fields such as employee tenure, department, or location. By regularly analyzing employee feedback, organizations can stay on top of issues that impact employee engagement, and address them before it becomes costly for the business.

Three areas to examine in an employee engagement analysis are:

1. Engagement Drivers
2. Engagement Levers
3. Tools to Maximize Results

Let’s examine each area, and how the Stratifyd Signals data analytics platform can help.

Specific engagement drivers to look for in the employee data:

• Growth; often expressed in terms of progression, promotion, status, and celebrating success.
• Relationships between leaders, peers, team members, and overall loyalty to the organization.
• Autonomy and flexibility in decision making and freedom to balance work and family.
• Fairness; often expressed in terms of equity and ethics. Hopefully you will not receive feedback like this: I called the ethics line and was fired.
• Well-being; an overall driver encompassing health, pace of work, fun, and enjoyment in the workplace.
• Security; clarity in knowing how the next initiative will affect employees.

Signals uses machine learning to determine the most relevant topics in the data, and presents them by category so you can easily drill down into the data. A word cloud widget is available for a useful visualization of commonly used terms, and a sentiment score provides a high level directional on how your company stands on employee engagement. Once you know the ‘what’ and ‘why’ in the data, you can use the following levers to improve the results.

Levers to influence engagement:

• Alignment levers. Instill employees with a common understanding of the purpose and goals of the organization. Why does your organization exist? What are the short and long term goals, and what strategy is being used to accomplish them?
• Implementation levers. These are the tools employees use to accomplish work: process, technology, communications, training, policy, organizational design, and compensation. These are the tools we turn to first to get things done.
• Management levers. These levers confirm that goals are being accomplished, the purpose is being met, and the teams holds each other accountable for mutual success. Tools include control points, status checkups, and readouts to review progress. Measurement tools show everyone if progress is being made.

After using these levers, run a Signals analysis on a regular basis (e.g. weekly/monthly/quarterly) to measure progress and to spot trends in the data before your organization gets too far off track. There is no reason to keep the Signals data analytics results a secret. We’ve made it easy to collaborate by sharing and annotating dashboards (see this post). The visualization of the Signals User Interface makes it easy for everyone in the company to use data analytics, even the CEO!

Now that you have a process to identify employee engagement issues, and know the levers to adjust, focus on how to get the most out of your efforts.

Maximizing value of your employee engagement initiative:

• Let the Voice of the Employee define the goal. Often organizations have a predisposed (and potentially biased) viewpoint of what it takes to motivate employees and drive engagement. However, it is the employee who defines their own motivation. Rather than beginning with assumptions of what motivates employees, let the data tell the story.
• Establish a response team to take actions on insights presented by the data. It is frustrating to employees to report issues, and nothing happens as a result. Data analytics sheds light on gaps between employee expectations and company culture. Take action based on these insights.
• Don’t bury the negatives. Nothing destroys trust as much as hiding problems identified by employees. Be transparent, address problem areas head-on, and explain not only the ‘what’ on the action items you will be talking, but also explain the ‘why’.

Are you convinced of the value of data analytics insights on employee engagement levels? The Signals AI-powered data analytics platform makes it easy to glean actionable insights from all types of employee feedback data. Contact us via the chat option on our website, or email us at webcontact@stratifyd.com. Get a free trial account and starting getting insights today.